Quotes about Ethics
By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down.
— Henry David Thoreau
There is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected.
— Henry David Thoreau
Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.
— Henry David Thoreau
I will not through humility become the devil's attorney
— Henry David Thoreau
I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.
— Henry David Thoreau
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
— Henry David Thoreau
To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
— Henry David Thoreau
It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders.
— Henry David Thoreau
if injustice, is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.
— Henry David Thoreau
Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
— Henry David Thoreau
If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.
— Henry David Thoreau
It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
— Henry David Thoreau